I need to be more careful what I wish for, it was 37 degrees yesterday, and only cooled down marginally at night. I also need to stop trusting my own employers weather service, which is currently reporting today's temperature as 16 degrees with a strong possibility of rain, when it is in fact 36 degrees and not a cloud in the sky.

My office faces west and is not air-conditioned, although we have been provided with portable fans. I haven't worked like this since I was at school - I can't help feeling I should be going out at lunch time to run through the sprinklers in a school mandated hat and buying a 25cent Icy pole from the mothers canteen.

It reminded me of a strange thing the teachers used to do at my school when it was hot, which was to periodically switch the ceiling fans off because they claimed that having them on "made us talk." This always seemed like a implausable, we got in as much trouble for chattering in winter, and now I wonder if it was a threat to try and make us shut up. It never worked, and anyway little kids are less exhausted by hot weather than adults in my experience, so they were cutting of their nose to spite their face, which is another expression I could never understand when I was a kid. I mean, why would you want to spite your face?

All last week, when we were freezing in boots and thick jumpers, an ice-cream man with an esky would come around and no-one ever bought anything because it was so cold. But today, definitely a day for ice-cream, he has not come. Perhaps it is too hot to hauling an esky around the local offices.